Category Archives: Weblogging

OPMLosAngeles

Written by Jason Cosper. Filed under BarCamp LA, Events, Geek Dinner, Geekery, Weblogging. 1 Comment.

So I was just thinking — it wouldn’t be an altogether horrible idea to get together an OPML or XOXO list of the BarCamp Los Angeles crew’s blogs, would it?

If someone wants to work with me on getting this done, let me know!

Travel Sick

Written by Jason Cosper. Filed under Events, Frazier, People, Travel, Weblogging, WordCamp. Comments Off.

After spending seven and a half hours on the road — three of which were in LA traffic I might add1 — I’m set up on the fold out at Frazier’s downright palatial Oaktown lair.

Tomorrow is WordCamp, where Frazier and I will will be representing Hipster Mafia2. What that means is him and I are going to go to assorted talks and I’m going to give out business cards and act like a wanker3.

If you see me in the hall and want to say hello or throw rotten fruit, walk over and do so.

I’ll try to update a few times tomorrow as I sit in the sessions — but you know how it goes with me and promising to make updates, right? ;)

  1. OC to SF by way of Culver City is not something I’d call fun. But that 30 mile, one and a half hour detour netted me $130 and helped me get rid of my Sidekick II.
  2. That basically means Preshrunk — but we might have another property someday soon.
  3. Hopefully Arrington or Calacanis don’t magically appear and out-wanker me. That’d make me sad.

My Twttr Ponies

Written by Jason Cosper. Filed under Geekery, Lists, Weblogging. 2 Comments.

Like any good internet beta whore, I just started using twttr. And while it’s pretty cool and rather promising, there are a few things that I really wish it had…

  1. For starters, a simple JavaScript based badge would be nice. While Flash is nice for some things, I really don’t think I need to load it to tell the world I’m having a beer or going on a walk. Also, it’d be nice if I didn’t have to recode my template to fit it in.
  2. RSS/Atom feeds wouldn’t hurt either. I know it’s supposed to be mobile phone based, but it really would be nice if I could give my feed out to folks instead of making them use twttr’s service to follow me around. Keeping track of my friends would be much less irritating too… ;)
  3. The ability to turn off “update sent” notices being sent to your phone. Yeah, I know I just sent an update. I appreciate that you want to let me know that my friends got my message and everything, but that’s really sort of unnecessary. Well, at least I think it is. *shrug*

I’m really not trying to be a curmudgeon, honest. I just think that this stuff would take twttr from being a novel application to something I actually use frequently.

P.S. Like, OMG! Add me!
P.P.S. According to Jack — who happens to be the dude behind twttr — ponies #1 and #2 are already being worked on. Hooray!
P.P.P.S. What’s more, pony #3 is a non issue. Apparently the “update sent” message only gets sent to your phone on your first message. Sweet!

Why Bloggers Love Handheld Computers

Written by Jason Cosper. Filed under Geekery, Weblogging. Comments Off.
Why Bloggers Love Handheld Computers

While it may not be a handheld computer per se, this is the exact reason I bought a Sidekick.

Oh Drew, you sure do have my number…

Why Is WordPress So Sexy?

Written by Jason Cosper. Filed under Preshrunk, Rant, Weblogging. 4 Comments.

Psst… I fidgeted with the layout on Preshrunk.

Actually, all I really did was find a really sexy WordPress template and tweaked it to my liking — but I’m pretty sure I’ll keep this design up for a while. At least until everyone and their brother starts using it on their own sites.

When I showed the new layout to Matt, he remarked:

Matt: WP templates out there are so good
Matt: it seems stupid to custom design anything

And you know what? I’m inclined to agree. I only spent half an hour switching up some colors in CSS and fixing a few grammatical errors in the post data at the bottom of the page before I considered it ready. To compare, when I launched the site using Blogger, I spent a few hours tweaking someone’s port of Kubrick to get it exactly the way I wanted it.

Now I’m not trying to say that WordPress is easier to use — or even really any better — than Blogger is. Both of them have their shortcomings. But please don’t think that I’m knocking Blogger. I was a paid Blogger Pro user back in the day. And up until a several months ago, I thought I’d be using it forever. So needless to say, I have plenty of love and respect for them.

What I think I’m getting at here tho is that the WordPress community has quite a few more passionate designers than the general Blogger community does under its belt. Sure, Google can afford to hire Zeldman, Cederholm and Shea — but they don’t even use Blogger to run their own sites. Can you even name one resource for Blogger templates other than the default ones that are provided for you? I know I can’t.

The people who are releasing all of these beautiful WordPress templates on the other hand, actually manage to use the software on a pretty regular basis. They know how to hack their way around the extensive template available to get some pretty amazing results. Sure, the code may occasionally be a tad bit hellish to read thru when you need to do a quick tweak, but the designers are passionate about WordPress and really manages to show in their designs.

Think about it… When was the last time you saw a Blogger design get ported over to WordPress? Yeah, I don’t seem to remember that happening either.

Damn. I’m getting off on a rant here… Sorry about that. I could go on for a bit longer, but I’ll spare you all. Just go give the new Preshrunk a peek, okay? Cheers!